


Blow by Blow

by softgrungeprophet



Series: Compass [2]
Category: The Amazing Spider-Man (Comics), Venom (Comics), Venom Inc.
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Injury, Body Horror, Crying, Daddy Issues, Dogs, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotions, Explicit Language, Fix-It, Gen, Healing, Hitchhiking, Hospitals, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Injury Recovery, Intrusive Thoughts, Isolation, Medication, Mental Health Issues, Minor Violence, Near Death Experiences, Nightmares, Other, Pain, See the notes at the beginning of each chapter for which of these tags apply, Self Confidence Issues, Self-Hatred, Siblings, Venom (2018) comic spoilers, i'm sorry i drop a lot of f-bombs it's second nature at this point, reference to drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-15 22:12:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 6,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16941639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softgrungeprophet/pseuds/softgrungeprophet
Summary: A series of vignettes establishing key points in the timeline.Will include varying POVs and alternate takes on canon events leading from Venom Inc. up to and into the current Venom run.1 is Andi, 2 is Flash, 3 is the symbiote, 4-6 are all Eddie's POV, 7 is Mary's and 8 is Eddie again.There is no good way to show which tags apply to which chapter, so please see beginning-of-chapter notes for any warnings, as some chapters are fairly tame but others may be a little more upsetting for some readers.





	1. Just As Badass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andi pretends to be strong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No warnings... Mostly just a lot of swearing and crying.  
> Andi Benton POV.  
> Set during/after the ending of Venom Inc.

Andi would have ground her nails into Lee Price's eyes, if she could have. Taking her second self, dominating it—there was no mercy in her mind. But... What could she do about it, with all those men around him? And Flash right there, worried about her. So she tamped it all down, put on her happy face, and pretended everything was okay.

Just as badass, sure! Flames and fury. That's Andi Benton.

Who needs a _suit_?!

Leave her alone in Philly; that's fine. Stay in New York; that's fine.

She'd just crash at his empty apartment.

That'd teach him.

Eat all his stupid food.

Watch his stupid TV.

Use his stupid Wi-Fi to see stupid Anti-Venom trending on stupid Twitter.

"FUCK!"

Andi pressed her hands to her temples, already as far as she could get on foot—but of course... he could still see her.

And hear her.

"Fuck." Andi crouched down. She heard his footsteps crunching through the snow, running at first, then slowing once he'd realized it was just a temper tantrum. She curled her arms around her head and, voice muffled, shot out, "Just leave me alone."

He paused just beside her. "Hey, c'mon." To his credit, he kept his hands to himself, awkward at her side. He sighed, and dropped down in a mirror of her position. Still kept his hands to himself, planted on his knees, even as he tilted his head to try to catch her eye. "Did I do something wrong?"

Andi let her arms fall from her head, fingertips brushing the snow. She looked at him, and shook her head. She could feel herself pouting—not that comical, cartoony way in movies, but the verge-of-tears way. Throat tight and jaw all tensed up, stubborn jutting chin and burning eyes. "Coach—" Her voice cracked, and that was it. An angry, sobbing mess, lunging at Agent Anti-Venom to wrap her arms around him.

Her other was the light of her life—along with the hellfire—but Flash Thompson was her mentor.

He let her hug him without even a falter. No interruption, no awkward talking, just a solid presence.

She felt so alone.

At least she didn't have to worry about the cold.

Eventually, Flash spoke—without the flanged purr of Anti-Venom, face red from the winter air when she looked up at him—"Talk to me."

"You—" Andi sniffed, wiping her nose on her sleeve. "You're just gonna _leave me_ in Philly? Party with stupid... _Spider-Man_?"

Flash's face dropped. "I—I gotta keep an eye on Brock, on Venom—"

"Bullshit!" Andi stood, looking down at him in the moment before he followed her upright. "Venom's not gonna be a problem and you know it!" She dug the heels of her palms against her eyelids. "I just—If I don't have my symbiote, and I don't have _you_ —" She growled in frustration.

Flash took her by the shoulders, gently, as the stark white and black of Anti-Venom peeled away. "Hey, listen, Andi. You still have your aunt, right?" His eyes were infuriatingly understanding.

She shook her head. "That's not—it's not the same."

After a moment, he sighed. "Maybe you're right."

What?

Really?

"You can handle yourself, you're basically an adult but... I know from experience how little that means without... you know." He gestured through the falling snow. "A dumb idiot to eat pizza with." He rubbed his exposed forearm, shivering a little.

Wow.

Andi squinted. "Are you calling _me_ a dumb idiot, or yourself?"

"Oh, definitely me."

Flash grinned, that stupid, goofy grin, and Andi rolled her eyes.

She let her forehead fall against his chest. "You better get the kind with stuffed crust."

His laugh felt rumbly against her face, but it was nice. If a little childish to let herself be hugged not once but twice in one day! Where was her goth façade?! Her too-cool-for-you aloofness? She took a breath and wrapped her arms around him. "You're a pushover."

"Yeah. Sorry."

"I don't mind."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> flash, gradually peeling away layers of the agent anti-venom armor until he's standing in a snowdrift wearing nothing but a t-shirt and armored symbiotic prosthetics: why am i so cold


	2. Oh Comely

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Let me take care of you, one last time.]  
> \--  
> A fix-it for ASM #800

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is "Oh Comely" by Neutral Milk Hotel: [link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-fjyEIgWik)  
> \--  
> Brief mentions of pain, death/near-death, healing, etc. but nothing particularly graphic.  
> Flash Thompson POV.

Fucking... Sparkle Blast gauntlets... What a stupid fucking name.

He couldn't go out to a _sparkle blast_.

And what would Andi do without someone to annoy her with paternalistic nagging and bad jokes!?

Flash grit his teeth. He was in a lot of pain. Nerve-endings ablaze.

He'd told Andi he'd only be gone a couple days, max. Just had to head up to NY to help Spider-Man out with his arch-nemesis-meets-symbiotic-nightmare. Easy! Okay, maybe he never thought it'd be easy. But he never figured it would end up like this. The way the synthetic Anti-Venom symbiote wrapped around his neurons, he could practically feel himself dying. All the little cells burning themselves out.

He'd promised her he'd learn how to drive again.

With adaptive hand controls and everything!

He wasn't even middle-aged yet!

But his heart couldn't keep up with itself and he couldn't breathe and everything smelled like burning flesh. Crawling all over even as he rambled himself to death beside Spider-Man ( _My friend, my hero_ ), even as his eyes rolled back in his head from the... the everything. Just, all of it, too much, all at once. He wanted to lay down in a bed, with a glass of water, and blankets, and airflow. His prosthetics itched like a motherfucker, and for some reason that poked through all the other terrible sensations. Drove him up a wall but he couldn't move anymore.

Then...

Something familiar. Soft and cool, slightly slick and silky, but not exactly wet to touch. Gentle on his face, moving down his neck, across his body, into his pores and his mouth and his ears and his nostrils and the corners of his eyes.

"No..." His voice came out so weak and trembly and hoarse he couldn't even be sure he'd spoken audibly.

[ **Yes.** ]

Hadn't he wanted this, the whole time?

Yet at the same time, hadn’t the artificial Anti-Venom symbiote offered him a clean conscience and an honest-to-God suit? Without a brain this time. Without feelings.

[ **Let me take care of you, one last time.** ]

 _Oh, buddy_ , _I missed you so much_.

Everything smoothed down so much, soothed down so much. Every fried nerve knit itself back together, with hiccups here and there—full-body flinches and gasps as white and black hissed agonizingly around each other under his skin and in the linings of his organs. He could feel one of them wrapped around his heart like glue, expanding into his lungs and everywhere else, pushing the other out—then retracting, withdrawing in a sudden spool of motion.

Flash groaned. He took a deep, deep breath, and it hurt a little, and he was sore, but he could _breathe_. Mostly.

"Flash?"

He slapped at Spider-Man's leg, and when he spoke his voice sounded like it had gone through a mulcher. "I'm fine! Get out of here! Save people!"

"I'm coming back for you."

A rustle, and he was left alone.

Flash rolled onto his side and nearly hacked up a lung, like grinding glass as he caught his breath—but when he finally opened his eyes he found only a gob of white like the kind of stuff you might find in an elementary school science class. Cornstarch and water, liquid and solid—in this case, sinking and spreading into a thin puddle beside his face.

Flash snorted.

He lay on the roof for a while, just reveling in the beat of his own heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dan Slott has not done much to ingratiate himself with me.
> 
> I read _The Amazing Spider-Man_ #800 and wrote a blog post about my criticisms if that's your thing: [link](https://nadiarwendt.wordpress.com/2018/12/10/asm800/)


	3. Medical Isolation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It got too much for both of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains very brief, potentially upsetting descriptions of nightmares, self-hatred, and sedation.  
> Tags: Nightmares, Self-Hatred, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Body Horror, Medication, Isolation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort.  
> Symbiote POV.  
> Set slightly before and superseding/replacing the intro to issue #1 of Venom (2018).

Nightmares plagued Eddie. Some of the symbiote's own past, some of their shared past, some of Eddie's past, and most notably some of their child.

The feedback loop between their minds amplified the sense of failure— _I'm a bad father I'm a bad parent we messed up I messed up I'm a fuckup_ —Some of it was the symbiote's own insecurities and panic, but most of it was Eddie, and all his buried self-hatred and suppressed emotions. Not _well_ -suppressed though. Any time he let his guard down too much, deprived himself of sleep for too long or got blindsided by a thought in the shower it washed through his body like floodwaters, fevered and tense, raising his heartrate until the symbiote managed to push through the bad thoughts well enough to calm him.

Firm control over his heartbeat, over his lungs. Lace between the cells and pump the bellows steady through the spiral.

Technically its hosts didn't need to breathe, but... Most of them did it habitually anyway, even when they didn't need the air for speech, and the symbiote had found that controlling his breathing soothed Eddie greatly. Not just his breathing, to be fair. It unspooled out into every crevice and atom it could find, nudging here and prodding there until their body found equilibrium and inevitably slipped into a near-sleep state. A meditative daze, which lasted for just a moment but which relaxed his jaw at the very least.

An instant body-and-spirit massage that raised a swathe of goosebumps and a tingling feeling up his sides and neck, which the symbiote felt secondhand. It liked those feelings and so did Eddie, but they only did it in private and in his most fraught moments. Emergencies.

But it still couldn't keep the bad dreams at bay. It could soften the edges and adjust little pathways toward kinder imaginings, but it couldn't fully force his brain to change the images or intrusive thoughts that roiled around his brain during sleep. Just buffer...

It got too much for both of them.

After breaking and entering into Dr. Steven's lab, and a long talk-turned-argument-turned-talk-again during which the symbiote ignored most of the words in favor of rolling around through Eddie's veins, they were given a small bottle of pills. Or, Eddie was.

[ **What are those?** ]

"Anti-psychotics, apparently."

[ **Good? Bad?** ]

"He's not sure they'll help. Said they might cause damage, but there's no way to be certain."

[ **Hmmmmm... Trust you to do what's best, Eddie.** ]

He took them on a particularly bad night—after clawing his way out of a dream of disintegrating skin peeling from a tiny skull and knife tracks along his limbs and clumsy parasitic brain surgery—

Water, capsule, automatic reflex and dispersing medication.

Slow... everything got all muffled through his skin.

The pills left the symbiote fumbling blind through Eddie's system, feeling its way along his bones and his neural pathways.

[ **Eddie? Eddie?** ]

 Dark oblivion, no sound, no light, no thoughts, no voice.

[ ** _Scared_ , Eddie.**]

Desperate and alone, isolated.

[ **Eddie, please. Eddie?** ]

Though it felt like forever, the effect was short-lived, unable to stand up to Klyntar biology and determination. The symbiote came swimming back to light and sound, to profuse apology, spoken and subconscious—"I'm sorry, baby, I'm so sorry, I'm sorry."

_I should've known better._

The symbiote wrapped around his neck and arms with a purr, a distress-comfort-self-soothing vocalization between the two of them, as much for itself as for him. He curled his hot fingers into its flesh and it flicked its tongue out. A little scolding, a little shaken, a little affectionate. It pushed its complex feelings to him and he hugged himself—the both of them—tightly, with his arms around their shared body.

"I'm sorry. I love you."

The entire bottle of pills went into the trash.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After thinking about it for a while, a couple of weeks ago I realized that pretty much the entire thing with the anti-psychotics in the start of Cates' run is not only incredibly uncomfortable, but from a strictly plot-centered context... pretty much entirely unnecessary.
> 
> It doesn't really progress anything in the story or offer useful or sympathetic characterization... knowing that the pills don't even help him keep control or help anything at all. They just isolate the symbiote from its main source of enrichment and socialization and make it so he has silence. Eddie's a stubborn idiot who will do anything to protect his other and improve their relationship, so I find it hard to accept that he would just shove them away like some sort of intrusive hallucination rather than a person he has cultivated a deep affection with.
> 
> I get it--ohhh it's God!!! Ohh this is so much bigger than everything before, look how Eddie has spiraled--but you don't even offer context for the spiral. You don't even offer me a reason to understand how he could have possibly reached such lows after they worked so hard (and with no small measure of success) to improve their relationship and communication, you just offer me this almost contextless memory-dream and tell me that my sympathy for the begging, pleading one is somehow misplaced.
> 
>  
> 
> Okay.
> 
>    
> The medication isn't necessarily inherently bad it's just obviously the wrong choice for the situation.  
> Personally I always figured Eddie probably takes medication--just not anti-psychotics. It comes up in the 4th chapter, briefly.  
> anyway, this one's a little funky... i'm not sure how i feel about it...


	4. Nothing to prove but proving it to yourself anyway

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He tried to do right by his darling and if Strickland thought him a self-absorbed prick then he could keep thinking that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No warnings here, except a tiny bit of self-hatred but what else is new for Eddie.  
> Eddie Brock POV.  
> Rooted in issue #1 of Venom (2018) by Cates et al.

Eddie couldn't speak, even as his brain began working to keep up with Strickland's questions.

_"What's its name?"_

It didn't have one, it didn't work like that. Not when you're all mixed up blood and bone and brain tissue pulsing with shared emotions, back and forth nerve impulses feeling each other and feeling for each other through the dark. But he stuttered a non-answer that painted him as ignorant, as his brain struggled to keep up with the old man's rapidfire questions.

Too incredulous to properly form words.

The idea that not knowing its age amounted to—to neglect, or whatever he seemed to think? As if time could ever map so cleanly, as if the symbiote even knew its own age in a framework that Eddie could make sense of.

As if he didn’t know the things it liked.

It liked rare steak. It liked dark chocolate. Together, they liked _spaghetti_ , of all things.

Sometimes the best he could manage was a handful of wrinkled dollar bills for a stick of salami and some chocolate milk, but it still _liked_ those things.

It liked the bathroom after he took a cool shower in the summer. Balmy and damp.

Who cared how many others it had bonded to? Three? Six, seven? Fifteen? Didn’t matter.

All that mattered was that they were together.

It liked the color blue, particularly of the ocean during a storm.

It liked soap operas and medical dramas and documentaries about fish.

It liked when the garbage truck drove by and rrrrrumbled the whole building around them.

It liked when Eddie scratched the top of its head with his finger, when it peeked out like some kind of little slug or worm.

It liked when Eddie laughed and the sound reverberated in his chest—a weird sensation to experience secondhand, when it pushed the feeling back at him.

It liked to play with the long, grown-out strands of his hair and it liked to rub up against his stubble when he couldn't muster the energy to shave.

It liked to wrap itself around his thighs and arms and torso. Liked it when he held its physical manifestation in his arms. Liked the tactility of it.

_"Do you age when you wear it?"_

Well he wouldn't look like the bottom of a shoe if he didn't, now would he?

_"Do you know anything about that thing besides big teeth and flashy spider symbols?"_

All Eddie could manage was reactionary, anger.

Maybe this guy was right. Maybe that torn-up **_Worthless_** jangling in his brain earlier was true. Maybe the symbiote really hated him, maybe he didn't know anything about it, maybe it should have left him again.

No way.

That was bullshit.

They shared a body, a brain, a heartbeat. Even with the nightmares and loss of control, he felt its desire to do good, to be better, felt its adoration with every tap of his pulse against the soft underside of his wrist. Felt his own love for it spread smooth across his tongue even when he couldn't afford their SSRIs or multivitamins or phenethylamine supplements or anything else, even when his brain couldn't keep up with its needs and they thrummed with hunger together.

He tried to do right by his darling and if Strickland thought him a self-absorbed prick then he could keep thinking that because Eddie didn't have a goddamn thing to prove to yet another stranger calling him stupid—even if not in so many words.

[ **Eddie...** ]

He ignored Strickland's words, ignored the heat at his back in favor of inward contemplation.

_Love?_

[ **Care for you too**.]

He almost smiled, but it manifested more as a soft sigh, eyes half closed as he felt it coil around his core.

[ **Didn't mean the jagged words...** ]

_I know, darling. We'll get through this._

"...What do you want?"

Even if it meant listening to Strickland's assumptions.

Anything for his other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm very tired so I might have missed some weird typos.
> 
> obvs like half of this is headcanons but eh what is canon but the glorified headcanon of some dude who happens to get paid for it
> 
> Honestly I don't really know if I think the symbiote has a name or not, or if it would. The intent was definitely that like, they're so wrapped up tight in each other it becomes kind of a moot point. But. IDK.  
> At the very least I know in my heart that Eddie knows the symbiote's favorite foods and stuff, I mean if only because of the Hunger showing him going to lengths to get the right kind of supplements to make it happy and healthy.
> 
> Also tbqh I don't love this chapter but ehhh whatever


	5. Selfish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Foolish of me to forget how apt your name is."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Maker is insufferable, he and Eddie/Venom have a brief... scuffle.  
> Some brief descriptions of injury and bleeding.
> 
> Eddie Brock POV.

This gangling man in his stupid helmet, with his tea-for-show and his stuffy condescension... Waving some years-old blood test around. Remnants of Agent Venom from Flash Thompson's own body.

"Of course, I could do so much more if I only had some way to meet him... In the flesh, as they say."

Eddie stiffened. And in his chest, though supposedly braindead, he felt his other stir. A vaguely nauseating malaise, a swirl of protective anger.

"I do have my men, I suppose..." The Maker smiled at Eddie, tapping the vial against his mouth. "Maybe they can bring me his little protégé, too..."

In a movement Eddie himself barely managed to process, he grabbed the Maker by the throat. Shoved him up against the steel cabinets, fingers tightening though the man's body simply bent and shifted in his grip as Eddie snarled at him—

"If you go within a hundred yards of either of them—" The next four words he drew out, punctuated with the briefest of pauses as Eddie became Venom. " **We will kill you.** " Each hung in the air. No idle threat, no bravado here beyond the vibratory undercurrent of Venom's two-in-one vocal cords. Their teeth bristled as they growled, and a small trail of saliva dripped from their tongue. " **Are we clear?** " They tightened their clawed fingers, just for emphasis.

The Maker said nothing, though he emanated slightly less smug energy than before.

Fear?

Or common sense?

In their anger, Venom—Eddie—had not noticed the stretched out limb sneaking up on him. Not until it grabbed them by the face and, with the element of surprise on the Maker's side, shoved them to the side. They dragged him down with them, not once loosening their vice-grip around his throat, and the two—three—two of them tumbled to the floor in a tangle of taffy limbs and agitated coils of bio-polymers.

Fist to jaw, dislocating it before it pulled itself back into place.

Claw to helmet, crumpling it like paper.

Knee to gut—useless.

Venom slammed the Maker into the tiled flooring, hauled him up. Ground his face into the metal cabinets with a roar.

They grappled, half upright against the wall.

Venom sank their teeth into his arm with a deep rumbling growl like a crocodile. Shook it like one too, death roll falling to the floor—that got a shout from him and he seemed to zip into one place like one of those toys held together with string. Release the button and loose limbs took their natural form—Venom let him clamber away. He hissed a low curse.

They growled at him again.

He laughed. "Foolish of me..." He pulled himself upright. "To forget how apt your name is."

Immediate threat gone, at least temporarily, the symbiote retreated, though it still barely thrummed with irritation. Cool, re-circulated air wafted across Eddie's face. He'd worked up a sweat, somehow, and now goosebumps tickled up his arms and the back of his neck. He watched the Maker, back straight and breathing heavily.

"Shame for you, I have no circulatory system."

Eddie lunged at him, and he simply bent out of the way. Like an adult side-stepping a temper-tantrum. Neatly avoiding a pesky child. He clicked his tongue.

Still... Eddie felt the dull heat of satisfaction.

He couldn't hurt this Reed Richards, but he didn't need to.

He crushed Flash's vial in his hand, relishing the hard sting and pinch of glass shards digging into his palm. Blood pooled between his fingers and dripped to the floor, as Flash's remnant of his other seeped into his lacerated skin—already healing, sealing around this once-deposited-now-returned piece of themselves.

The Maker's face had curled into a delighted grin.

"You _are_ self-centered and self-serving."

Eddie glared him down. "Where are your men?"

Richards smirked.

The doors opened, and in trooped more guards than seemed feasible, stacking behind each other, moving to block anything even remotely resembling an exit. Suits of cards taped up against the doorway.

Eddie looked around the room. He could feel a tug, in his gut. The glimmer of blue eyes, blond hair, a shit-eating grin. The vaguest echo of an echo—of Flash Thompson's voice in his head, calling him an idiot and asking what he planned to do. Even as The Maker's men surrounded him with sonic weapons at the ready, even as he raised his arms in surrender, he could feel it pointing him to Philadelphia.

"On the ground! Hands behind your head!"

He knelt, at their commands. Hands overlapped and pressed flat to the back of his skull.

And then he vanished.

Cloaked in shadows and atoms, Venom ripped the cover off of the ceiling vent directly above, and crammed himself into the tiny metal crawlspace. Lucky, the way their flesh and forms merged. The way it let them thin and stretch—though not nearly as well as Mr. Fantastic or his bastard of an alternate self, but enough to move like a python through the walls.

"They're in the air shaft!"

Not for long.

Any turn they could take, they took.

Any opportunity to find themself in a new room, a new hallway.

Infrared sensors beeped, cameras swiveled in an attempt to spot them, but they moved until they found a window—and they jumped in a burst of crackling glass, sunlight catching on the shards and framing their silhouette in refractions.

And then they were gone.

Not to Philadelphia, not yet. He couldn't lead the Maker or his foundation to Flash and Andi. Had to keep them safe, had to wait at least a week or two. Lose the trail. Be more careful this time.

San Francisco, maybe. Far away, far enough away to lose them for at least a short while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Something I didn't include, but, in this version of events, during the rampage post-burning, Venom did NOT take Eddie to his father's house. Instead, they tried to get into Alchemax (despite their ban) and got apprehended by the Maker's men in the lobby.  
> ALSO I've decided that the dragon symbiote remnants weren't stolen. He wants Eddie for his body, so to speak.  
>  
> 
> Also I think the Maker is invincible???? he's literally a sentient stack of bacteria. what the fuck.


	6. Cash in pocket

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I have people I care about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Main thing to look out for here is... bad mental health stuff and mention of shitty dads.
> 
> contains: frat bros drinking, hitchhiking, dog-biote, self-affirmation in response to self-hatred, and ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*crying*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧
> 
> Eddie Brock POV
> 
>  
> 
> Side-note, Dylan does not exist in this AU, and Carl Brock lives in the fancy-ass five-story manor mentioned in the Lethal Protector novelization.

Maybe leading a pit bull around by a chain wasn't the best idea. But... God forgive him, he couldn't bear the constant skin-to-skin contact he'd grown so accustomed to. Not like this, with this silence. At least if his other was a dog he could pretend there was something there. Could hold it and press kisses to its velvety head and reassure it—really reassuring himself—that everything would be okay. Even if it made hitching a ride harder. No one wanted to pick up a glowering, burly dude like him off the side of the highway as it was. Not unless they had a reckless streak. Add a drooling, fanged pit bull to the mix? With the breed's bad reputation? No way.

He walked along the side of the road for four hours before a pickup truck came to a stop ahead of him—nearly swiping him into a ditch as it honked.

His other growled, and he couldn't really blame it but he tugged the leash anyway.

 _Don't do anything rash_.

The truck was far too clean, and the kid who leaned out of the driver's side looked barely twenty, ready to start shit. A college boy with a trust fund and no consequences in his life.

"Hey bro, you need a ride?"

Eddie stared him down, but he nodded. He could see the other guy in the passenger seat, swigging straight from a bottle of vodka.

"Well, you won't fit in the front but you can sit back there." A smug smirk—Eddie had made the same face many a time in his life. A dare. Get your hopes up, let you down. No way you'll do it.

He couldn't muster himself to give much of a response—just picked up his "dog" and hauled them both up into the bed of the truck. As it rocked on its wheels under their sudden weight, he could just make out the drinker in the passenger seat saying "He actually got in???" with a half-slurred disbelief. Not his first drink of the night, huh.

Eddie closed his eyes, leaning back against the cabin window as the driver shut the door.

He made it to North Carolina with just those college boys—probably too afraid to tell him to get lost. They stopped at a motel after a long blur of sky, and that was his cue to get off. In that way, he hopped from ride to ride. Eighteen-wheelers and SUVs and Jeeps and even a motorcycle, NC to Florida, Florida to Texas sleeping in truck stop parking lots and on concrete picnic benches, Texas to New Mexico, New Mexico to California—he couldn't walk from LA to San Francisco in his state, but he wanted to. Tired of the cars and the drivers and the way his stomach rolled after days of eating nothing but bags of chips from half-busted vending machines, drinking from water fountains and bottles of soda.

He'd brought $50 of emergency cash, all ones, from the stash in his kitchen.

His wallet had been burned along with the clothes on his back. His ID, his debit card, his library card. All gone.

But there he was, in San Francisco, the place he'd grown up.

The place he'd been bullied and neglected and ignored.

He missed his college days. When he'd met Anne, when he could forget for an hour or two how much of a disappointment he was.

 _No_.

He dug his fingers into his palms, as he clutched his other's leash in one hand. Hard not to clench his jaw even as he repeated in his head—

_I'm not worthless, I'm not a failure, I'm not a disappointment._

He thought it was bullshit, but Spider-Woman had referred him to a therapist and he'd only gone twice but the woman had still told him to take his thoughts and turn them around on their heads.

_I'm not irredeemable, I can be a better man than I once was._

Sure, he had to lie to her about his name and parts of his past. But a lot of it was true. How he hated himself and how he knew he pushed blame for a lot of the things he'd done on other people but he couldn't stop himself, couldn't face himself.

_We have safe places to go where people will welcome us._

He glared at his father's towering affront to God, his mass-produced mansion with its huge windows and perfect lawn.

 _I'm_ not _alone. I don't need him._

He'd sworn to himself he'd never seek him out. There was no point in trying to get validation from a man who despised you, blamed you for all the bad things in his life, wanted nothing to do with you. He hated him right back, twofold, just as much as he could never admit how badly he wished someone had been there for him. Eddie had gone so long pushing it out of his head. He'd practically convinced himself he didn't even have a father. Just his older sister, shoved into a position of responsibility far too young, and the housekeeper, too busy to really give either of them what they needed.

_I have people I care about, people we care about, who are important to us._

He turned heel and left the Brock house behind him.

 _We have people who care about us too—Flash and Andi, our child, Mary, Liz and Steven, probably. Even Spider-Woman, the dinosaur people... The homeless folks beneath San Francisco_.

It was almost like coming home. After the whole incident with Beck, and everything that had happened since—after all that, they looked at him a little wary. But Elizabeth and her son Timothy saw him and he barely had a chance to prepare himself before they tackled him with embraces and "You disappeared!" and "I thought you died!" and he was shocked into a still silence until she drew back and looked up into his eyes—

Elizabeth grunted when he hugged her back, maybe too crushing, too hard of an embrace, but it had been so long. He took it in—the warmth of another body against his own, the gentle way her hands lit on his shoulders—and he couldn't help the burning in his eyes. He couldn't let himself cry in front of them, though. The people of Sanctuary looked up to him, even if a lot of them didn't trust him—if they ever had. He couldn't show how broken he'd become.

But he couldn't stop it.

"I'm so sorry." He hated the way he sounded, like this. "I've done so many things wrong."

Elizabeth shook her head against his chest. "You always protected us."

He actually _sobbed_ , and he hated it, but she just rubbed her hand up and down his back with quiet "shhhh"s.

When everything had finally settled, and they all sat together over their communal dinner, Eddie managed what might have been his first smile in weeks, weak and half-formed—"Last time I saw you two, Timothy was barely five feet tall..." He paused. "Look at you now..."

Timothy rolled his eyes, but he smiled anyway. He'd shot up, from a little boy to a gangly teenager, a real beanpole with messy hair and a pathetic attempt at peach fuzz. "Everyone always says that." He changed the subject, very obviously so: "What's your dog's name?"

Eddie sighed. "It's complicated." He held his hand out for his other to sniff and then—when hand met muzzle—let them melt together. Up his arm and wrapping him up in that so-familiar leather jacket.

He smoothed it down, and avoided meeting either Elizabeth's or Timothy's eyes.

"Holy _shit_."

" _Timothy_. Language!"

"Sorry, mom." Timothy reached out, and Eddie let him touch his sleeve. The material didn’t move, didn't ripple, just felt like leather and he knew the kid could tell as much. "Wow."

Eddie couldn't think of a good response, so he just nodded. Somehow, he felt... much better. Somehow, feeling the silk lining of a symbiotic leather jacket against the skin of his arms felt almost soothing, again. Not like it used to be, but... He hadn't realized how much he missed it, during the past few days, until that moment. He zipped it up to his throat and hunched in on himself a little, and together, the four of them ate and chatted, and for a second he almost felt okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who has not read either the Lethal Protector comics or the novelization of said comics (i read the latter), Sanctuary is an underground town beneath San Francisco where local homeless people have a safe place to exist and live, and help make sure everyone gets enough food.  
> Eddie helped protect them, and for that they welcomed him as a member of the community.
> 
> Some shit went down after that that I don't know the real details of, involving a contact of theirs named Beck who he had a romantic involvement with (according to the wiki, at least) but I figure they probably would still accept him, if a little warily. Not that plenty weren't already wary.


	7. Would you say he looks like Dolph Lundgren?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She wanted to talk to someone familiar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mary Brock POV.  
> Got some general hospital-y stuff, some brief references to nightmares, but not much else I don't think.

Mary was... so, so tired.

The past three weeks, in and out, and in and out. At least she felt alive now. Felt awake. Finally. Beat the night terrors, dream paralysis. She could remember where she was, mostly. Not underneath the shadow of a falling building, just in a hospital room, surrounded by the gentle but constant murmurations of life support equipment and machines. They'd finally taken out the catheter too. Not that she could walk on her own, easily or at all. Every time she needed to pee, she had to push the little button strapped to the side of the bed, and a nurse would show up to help her to the bathroom.

The doctors wanted to start her on physical therapy soon, to re-strengthen the muscles in her legs, her abdomen, her neck.

She felt so weak, but this was preferable to the built-up dreams, over-saturated and all-too-believable. Dreamed her mother was alive, dreamed Eddie had died, dreamed of a white waiting room and voices from people she couldn't see.

She wanted to talk to someone familiar. Not her dad, not ever him.

But no one knew Eddie's contact information.

But then... another week or two into her treatment (she couldn't quite keep track), like some kind of blessing—

"Ms. Brock..." The nurse shifted her clipboard as she leaned into the PT room. "A man claiming to be your brother is waiting in your room." She pursed her lips. "He won't leave until he sees you, he said. I know you wanted to see him but he has no proof of identity and, frankly, he seems dangerous."

Mary let herself be coaxed into the rickety hospital wheelchair she used to get around, with a hoarse hum. "Is he tall?"

The nurse nodded. "And angry."

"Yeah?" Mary smiled, as they pushed her into the hallway. "Would you say he looks like Dolph Lundgren?"

The nurse huffed. "Yes."

"I think I'll take my chances."

And sure enough, there he was.

"So it _is_ you—"

Older than the last time she'd seen him. Hair shorter than it had been in ages, and on the opposite end of the spectrum, fully bearded. He stood the second the nurse rolled her through the door, stiff with nervous energy and eyes glassy.

"Mary!"

"—you motherfucker. Do you—" Mary lacked the strength to put any kind of oomph behind her words, especially as she struggled to find the right ones. "You really... you're a real piece of work, Edward. You know that?"

He just beamed at her, like she could call him anything and he would adore the sound of her voice no less. Like nothing could stop the happy-train, seeing her in front of him.

"You big dummy."

He kept fidgeting with his hands, as she let the nurse help her back into bed.

Mary sighed. "Come here. But be careful, I'm not as _robust_ as I used to be." She held her arms out for him, and with all the care in the world he leaned down to hug her. Brief, and gentle, as if he feared hurting her, and then gone. She smiled up at him. "I see you're still a big crybaby."

He wiped his eyes, even as he laughed.

"Hey, sit down."

He sat down. He always listened to her, ever since he'd grown into a teenager and she'd managed to get past the strain half-raising him had put on their relationship. Once she went to college, and didn't have to spend all her time in that house taking care of everyone else. Once she could see him on her own terms and once he didn't resent her for always telling him what to do and trying to be mom cause no one else was mom.

Mary sighed.

Neither of them spoke for a long time, not until the nurse returned asking if she'd like to eat.

"They still won't let me have _real_ food, other than fruit and... like... lettuce." Mary spoke with her mouth half full of jello. "But the apple juice is always super cold, so it's not all bad." She smirked. "Relearning how to poop has been... fun."

Eddie smiled. They'd given him a granola bar, and he picked at it, little crumbs falling to the linoleum floor. "I'll smuggle you a sandwich, if you ask nicely."

She rolled her eyes, and let her head lean back against the pillows. "I think I'll be okay. Mashed potatoes aren't the worst."

"Yeah."

For all the age a beard gave him, for all his height and bulk, he looked like a little boy again. Quiet and withdrawn, uncertain what to do with himself. She watched him dismantle his granola bar bit by bit, technically eating it but making a mess more than anything else.

It was... nice to see a familiar face, in the hospital. Not a nurse or a doctor, but someone she really cared about, who really cared about her. She raised her arm and held it out to him. "Hey."

He finally looked up at her. Took her hand, without a word, setting his granola bar to the side.

Mary squeezed his hand.

"Thanks for coming to see me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't actually read either of the comics Mary is in so I'm not sure what her personality as an adult is like, if they even gave her one.
> 
> I spent like, a couple of minutes to google "what is it like to wake up from a coma" but didn't go much further than that so pardon me if it's not entirely accurate. I don't think there's a lot of precedence for recovering from a multi-year coma anyway.


	8. Stone in the gut

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He didn't need to stumble back into that place he'd been so many times before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEY  
>  **Warning for (mostly ideation of) self-harm, intrusive thoughts, and overall bad headspace.**
> 
>  
> 
> Slightly edited this over the night to better fit my experience with how intrusive thoughts manifest, which is to say, not as worded/verbalized thoughts at all.  
> Eddie Brock POV.

At this point, after weeks of denial and anger and despair and more anger, Eddie just wanted to feel his other's thoughts again. He couldn't stand the silence.

Maybe he wanted to act a little recklessly, endanger himself—but he couldn't forego his own safety entirely, at the risk of hurting someone innocent. He couldn't let a mother or a child be injured because of him. So he stayed patiently on the sidewalk when crossing the street, waited for the light to turn, helped Elizabeth carry her haul from the food bank.

He watched his step and kept to himself.

Later, when they got home—"Hey, Elizabeth, Timothy, I've got somewhere to be. I don't know when I'll be back but... thank you for always trusting me. Bye." He hugged them and left them below the streets of San Francisco.

Really, what he needed was something to take his frustration out on, other than himself.

The universe did not provide.

He settled for wedging himself between a dumpster and a pile of cardboard boxes in a dry alleyway, hoping to fall asleep eventually despite it being broad daylight—He kept picking at his cuticles and watching them heal just to remind himself he wasn't alone.

Was he trying to punish himself? He should've stayed in Sanctuary instead of this.

He dug his fingers into his forearms.

He could hurt himself.

For that brief trill of emotion.

But it would be gone faster than it took to heal him.

It was funny. People loved to talk about the tortured mind, but it was less crumbling walls and more the persistent poke of a child. Jab, jab, jab. Not verbal, really. Like a daydream, shoving itself into his eyes, intruding and unwanted. Tracking mud all over with images of what might happen, what could happen, if he just—

He threaded his fingers together behind his neck, bowing his head with a deep breath. He had to focus on other things. The way the gravel on the ground dug into his jeans. The sound of people out on the street. He curled his toes in his shoes. squeezed his eyes shut like a strained blink, imprinting pressure-light on his eyes even when he opened them back up again.

He knew it wouldn't matter if he _did_ hurt himself, technically. It would just heal. But he didn't want to put his other through that kind of worry, if they were still there. Even though it might give him brief emotional catharsis. And he didn't need to stumble back into that place he'd been so many times before. That headspace had nearly killed him, probably would have if not for the miraculous humor of the universe grappling with every aspect of his life. Though he feared this backslide might be inevitable, especially two thousand miles away from their routine, especially having already spiraled halfway there after nearly losing everything.

After _actually_ losing everything.

At least he wasn't seeing demons this time.

He shoved himself to his feet. He needed to find somewhere to stay, think through his plan. He had a few dollars left, not enough for anything more than a chocolate bar or maybe a bagel. Certainly not for shelter. Again, why not stay in Sanctuary to formulate his plan...?

He didn't know why. He just felt like he had to go somewhere else.

Needed somewhere he could be alone, where he didn't have to worry about other people.

Somewhere he could lay down and dream, hoping for nightmares to worm their way through the folds of his psyche. To fracture into protectiveness. To let him communicate with the symbiote resting in his body like a stone in his gut. Nothing else seemed to get the same response—sure, bodily harm and direct peril, direct threat, got him that brief **EDDIE** , brief **DANGER** ripped through his head and his heart but nightmares... Nightmares got him that pressed-up, wound-up incantation half-audible under his own displeasure.

It would almost be worth the way he woke up exhausted and awful.

He dragged his feet as he walked along the street.

Someone called for their father.

He turned his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bit of a bummer note to end these vignettes on but i think this should do it for the establishing points that i've been using as anchors for the main story.  
> so... time to keep working on that one haha  
>    
> being off your meds for... months probably, 2000 miles away from home without any money, worrying about some shadowy organization, while carting around the body of your spouse cannot be good for one's already shaky mental health. frankly he's probably coping much better than i would.  
> tho now that i think about it, i don't think i'd be capable of hitchhiking across the country in the first place.
> 
>  
> 
> the "incantation" mentioned is referencing eddie's nightmare in [this other fic i wrote](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16642412), in which the symbiote's fragmented consciousness repeats his name over and over while he's dreaming, awoken (in a way) by the intangible threat of the bad dream.


End file.
